By Caribbean News Now contributor
LONDON, England – Taxation, says Smith and Williamson, a leading tax advisory firm headquartered in the UK, is generally related to a person’s tax residency, not citizenship: “Although an individual can have citizenship rights or residence rights in a number of different countries, usually only countries where an individual is resident for tax purposes can tax the individual’s worldwide income and gains.”
Whether a person is a tax resident of a country depends on that country’s specific rules. In the vast majority of countries, including Caribbean citizenship by investment (CBI) jurisdictions Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia, tax residency is determined by a person’s centre of vital interests or domicile, i.e., the place wherein a person has a permanent intention to reside, as evidenced by past or current habitual residence.
It is “very rare” for citizenship alone to determine tax residency, with the most notable exception to this being the United States. “Therefore, merely obtaining citizenship of Saint Lucia, Dominica, or St Kitts and Nevis is not sufficient to make an individual a tax resident of these jurisdictions.”
With regards to reporting under the CRS, Smith and Williamson noted that this too is “based on tax residence and not on citizenship or the right to reside in a jurisdiction,” and, consequently that CBI programmes pose no risk to proper CRS reporting.
